


The Briar Wood

by Thimblerig



Series: The Tenner [1]
Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work, Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tale)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fic and Podfic, Fractured Fairy Tale, Minor Sound Effects, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Prompt Fic, The Tenner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23366509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Day One - Chrysalis
Relationships: Prince/Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tales)
Series: The Tenner [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680610
Comments: 11
Kudos: 6
Collections: Podfic Bingo, The Tenner





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am playing a storytelling game to pass the time, and I thought this one turned out quite nice.

__

_“This is a true story,” Lady Yekaterina murmurs, dipping her fingertips into her glass of wine and flicking drops of it into the fire so that it fizzes and sparks, “I got it from one of the participants…”_

* * *

**The Briar Wood**

* * *

Long ago, but not so long as that, there was a briar wood grown sudden and strange. After the magic of its making it stood there a hundred years and more, the prickles and brambles and dark twisted branches providing a shelter and food for the travelling birds, the small furry creatures, the little snakes of silver throat… The briar wood was a place of song and blossoming greenery for much of its life, and beautiful, too.

In the centre of it, the heart, silent as a tree stump absorbing into the earth, was a little castle of dressed stone, and inside the castle were many sleepers, and in the highest tower, the isolate, the bare, was a room draped in silk. The silken banners that announced royalty, the silken hangings on the wall, the silken drapery around the bed and the silken nightrail of a princess wrapped up against the wind and snug as a sleeper in a chrysalis.

It was not a prince who cut his way to the heart of the briar wood at the end of it all, nor even a nobleman, but Phillip _was_ a gentleman - the son of a country squire, and his character was equal parts gentle and practical. He took his time cutting through the wood with saw and clippers, wrapped in a good leather coat and carting the waste wood away for other use. Weeks he was in there, in the dark and the bird song, before his booted feet sounded echoes in the stone halls, the winding spiral stairs of the little castle.

Long and long had the princess slept, a hundred years and more she dreamed the dreams of the briar wood. When Phillip found her tucked away, he brushed aside layer after layer of winding silk and beheld her, and loved her - for who could not? And the gentle, practical man kissed her, very politely, on the cheek, and caught his breath as her eyes opened - eyes as bright and fierce as the morning. For Aurora had slept a hundred years and more swaddled safe in the brambles and she could not help but change, into a creature beautiful, and winged.

She loved him. Who could not love a man like Phillip? What passed between them that night is not for me to share - the secrets, the stories, the soft touches under the blanket of darkness.

But in the morning she ate him, and flew away over the briar wood.

* * *

_“I got it from Aurora, of course,” murmurs Lady Yekaterina. “Wonderful woman, and an excellent partner at Bridge.” She smiles cheerfully. “Who’s next?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What sleeps for a hundred years and cannot die??? Someone had to tell it how it is!
> 
> // _the little snakes of silver throat_ \- borrowed with thanks from "The Phantom-Wooer" by Thomas Lovell Beddoes.


	2. The Podfic

* * *

Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M-HMGA4oQQoukv2-U2MBVhaKC5WuXoM9/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) 

* * *

Format: MP3  
Length: 4:44  
Size: 7.93 MB

**Author's Note:**

> Programs Used: Audio Evolution; Logopit Plus; Music Editor
> 
> Cover Image: 
> 
> https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Vector-graphics-of-swirling-petals-floral-design/34665.html (public domain)
> 
> Music/FX:
> 
> “Simple piano improvisation” by ValentinSosnitskiy - https://freesound.org/people/ValentinSosnitskiy/sounds/431520/ (CC BY 3.0)  
> “quiet forest with frogs and birds.MP3” by psnflute1984 - https://freesound.org/people/psnflute1984/sounds/232424/ (CC BY 3.0)


End file.
